624 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN 



BY GUY ELLIOTT MITCHELL 



ONE of the most remarkable human faces in stone is 

 a giant profile which rears its head above the 

 eternal glaciers near the topmost slopes of Mount Ra- 

 nier. This enormous face, fashioned with most singular 

 fidelity in the image of man, is a remnant of the cone of 

 Ranier when the mountain was an active volcano. It is 

 a precipitous mass of rock and is known as "Gibraltar." 



GUARDIAN OF THE MOUNTAIN TOP 



The head of the recumbent giant, easily pictured by the imagination 

 stretched at length and calmly guarding Ranier's slope through the ages. 



The face is perfect in every lineament, chin, lips, nose, 

 deepset eye, and overhung brow and forehead. The 

 back of the head is covered with a thick hood. The face 

 is set at an angle of about 45 degrees, apparently gazing 

 up into the heavens, and it requires the exercise of but 

 a slight imagination to conceive the giant recumbent 

 body below the head, the trunk and the huge limbs lying 

 at full length on Ranier's slope, a thousand yards from 

 head to feet, and covered by the white blanket of the 

 eternal glacier. Surely this is the most gigantic natural 

 sculpturing of our continent. 



"W7ESTERN hemlock and spruce are the standard 

 v " mechanical and sulphite pulpwoods for the United 

 States mills in the Pacific Northwest, the hemlock being 

 consumed in greater amounts than any other single 

 species. Hemlock forms 60 per cent of the merchant- 

 able stand of timber on the Tongass National Forest, 

 Alaska. 



IRRIGATION AN ANCIENT PRACTICE 



BY JAMES R. PREDDY 



TRRIGATION began in Texas many years before the 

 lands embraced within its boundaries became a part 

 of the United States, years before these same lands 

 made up what was known as the Lone Star Republic. 

 To bring the time down to a more tangible date, the first 

 irrigation work was done according to tradition when 

 the Pueblo Indians constructed the peculiar ditches about 

 El Paso and the Pecos country, which authorities of 

 today claim were built for irrigation purposes. Another 

 tradition coming out of the past tells that these ditches 

 were built by the Yuma Indians when they were driven 

 westward by the Comanches and Apaches, and not by 

 the Pueblos. When Coronado, the roving explorer, 

 opened ihis country to the Spaniards he found well- 

 worked irrigation systems among the Indians; this was 

 in 1540 when he was pushing toward the North. The 

 practice of irrigation was continued under the Franciscan 

 Fathers, who constructed the five mission ditches that 

 were found near the present city of San Antonio. Even 

 under Mexican rule the work did not stop, and grants 

 by the Mexican government often read as follows : 



"In the name of the Mexican Nation, grants him one 

 day of water with its corresponding labor of land." 



Little advantage was taken of the early start made by 

 the forefathers of Texas until a comparatively recent 

 date. Too long was the statutory encouragement to irri- 

 gation delayed, although many a man with an eye to the 

 future saw the great possibilities stored up in the waters 

 of the Texas torrential streams as they wasted out into 

 the gulf. Texas' lands were probably worked for irriga- 

 tion before those of almost any other State, but when 

 one considers intensive cultivation of the last twenty 

 years, it must be admitted that the Lone Star State has 

 been backward. 



Irrigation first came into recognition of the law in 

 1875, but the acts passed at this time were of no more 

 practical value than were the acts passed thirteen years 

 later. Ten years after this the need for better irriga- 

 tion began to be felt in certain sections of the State, and 

 this led to the passage of acts which recognized the need 

 for irrigation works in these specific sections. In 1913 

 the Thirty-third Legislature became impressed with the 

 gravity of the conditions throughout the State, and 

 enacted a statute which created a Board of Water Engi- 

 neers, into whose keeping the water resources of the 

 State were given. At the present time this board 

 may be said to be the trustee for the State of all 

 water resources. 



When the three members appointed on the board came 

 together for the first time and looked the situation over, 

 they found that the field before them was set with diffi- 

 culties, and yet that it was a field rich in possibilities. 

 Each of the three members on the board were appointed 

 as representatives of one of the three water divisions 

 into which the State had been divided by the Legislature. 

 Later legislation declared certain waters State property, 

 determined the purposes for which water may be stored, 

 (Continued on page 636) 





